This is a blog by a Memphian who wants to share his unique perspective, along with some interesting facts & information, about cycling in & around the city of Memphis.

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Friday, June 24, 2016

Is it the end of the road for bicycle lanes on Riverside Drive?

Is it the
end of the road for bicycle lanes on Riverside Drive?
By:Michael Lander

Bicycle lanes were put in on Riverside Drive in June 2014.
They remained there for one year. The future of any
permanent bike lanes on this road is currently unknown.

For cyclists, Memphis’ iconic and scenic Riverside Drive could end up becoming
the boulevard of broken dreams.

In April 2016, the City of Memphis evidently decided to scrap the idea
of putting bike lanes on Riverside Drive when they sent out crews from the
city’s public works division to pave and re-stripe the roadway without any
accommodations made, whatsoever, for cyclists.

When asked about the decision to pave and re-stripe Riverside Drive without any bike
lanes, (protected or otherwise), a spokesperson for the city’s public works
division, Arlenia Cole, would only say that it might be re-evaluated at a later
date, but no other specifics were provided and the city has offered no further
comment on the matter since then.

The decision that’s been made by the City of Memphis has disappointed cyclists,
who have held out hope that the city would eventually find a way to allocate space for
them instead of having one of Memphis’ best known roadways being accessible exclusively for only motorized vehicles.

There has been a tremendous proliferation of bicycle lanes
in and around Memphis in less than a decade, but the ones
on Riverside Drive have been removed with no plans for
them to return in the immediate future.

It is especially disheartening for Memphis area cyclists when the city has, otherwise,
made great strides in creating hundreds of miles of bike lanes and trails for the better part of a decade. Now, it would seem, they have suddenly changed course
and are taking a step backwards.

Cyclists are not the only ones who may be discouraged by the city’s decision to
keep Riverside Drive like it has always been, either.Community planning groups, livability
advocates, and others have long-hoped to make the Memphis riverfront much more accessible to everyone.

Many, like the program director for Livable Memphis,
John Paul Shaffer, see the popular roadway as essentially being the equivalent of
a highway (or a speedway) separating the riverfront from downtown.

How we ended up where we are today all began with a pilot program that the City
of Memphis implemented when they closed the two western lanes of Riverside
Drive to traffic and officially designated them for bicyclists on Jun 15, 2014.

Accessibility to the river front was greatly enhanced when the
bike lanes were in place from June 2014 to June 2015. Their
removal has greatly diminished current and future access for
pedestrians and cyclists in Memphis.

After that date, motor vehicles were confined to the two lanes on the east side
of the median until the city, under mounting pressure, re-opened all of the
lanes back up to vehicular traffic a year later, in June 2015.

When this was done, former Memphis Mayor A.C. Wharton promised that the City Engineer’s Office would re-evaluate a
way later on to consider the addition of bike lanes, but that day never came.

Speck is a renowned city planner, urban designer, and author, who drew upon his
vast knowledge and experience and his work as the National Endowment for the
Arts and Director of Town Planning while at Duany Plater-Zyberk and Company when he compiled his analysis and
recommendations for Memphis.

Memphis consulted with city planner and urban designer,
Jeff Speck, to examine the river front area of
downtown Memphis and to provide recommendations
for designs that would enhance and improve it, which
included bicycle lanes. The city implemented it in a
pilot program, but ended it a year later, removing all
remnants of it in the spring of 2016.

In his assessment of Riverside Drive, Speck said that “Riverside Drive is the
highway that was famously killed to become a parkway, but now functions too
much like a highway, speeding cars in a seam between the city and its
riverfront.”

“We have a luxury of asking ourselves what kind of street Riverside Drive wants
to be.Surely it can still hold cars,
but the downtown would benefit tremendously if it were to hold cars moving a
bit less speedily, alongside pedestrians and cyclists,” Speck added.

As it exists today, Speck said that Riverside Drive creates a high-speed
barrier that discourages pedestrian activity and river access and posed the
question that we should all ask ourselves and that is if we think that
Riverside Drive needs to only take a strictly automotive form.

In spite of the wishes of cyclists, community planners, livability advocates,
and others, and the recommendations of experts like Speck, no changes have been
made to Riverside Drive and, for now, it doesn’t appear that there are any
plans for any.

Bike lanes on Riverside Drive would provide greater access
to the Harahan Bridge, (pictured in the foreground), which
will open up to cyclists and pedestrians later in 2016.

One of the biggest obstacles for any change to Riverside can be traced to the
intense opposition that arose after city engineers presented several proposals,
during the pilot program, which all included reduced lanes for motorized vehicles
and north and south bound lanes for bicycles.

Those who were against the redesign of Riverside Drive had a number of reasons
for their position, which included concerns of greater traffic congestion,
fewer options of getting around, safety concerns, and a lack of use of the bike
lanes by cyclists during the one year trial period that bike lanes were in place.

Based on the data that was collected during the pilot program, it would appear
that the bike lanes did help to reduce the speed of traffic to around 35 mph
and, while rear-end collisions increased, more severe collisions seem to have
decreased by at least 60 percent.

As it exists today, because of vehicular traffic, Riverside
Drive can often act as a barrier to pedestrians and cyclists
to get to or near the Memphis river front.

Throughout the pilot project, city officials solicited public input and
examined the viability of other re-configurations of Riverside Drive that
included bike lanes.These options would
have put one lane of car traffic on either side of the median.

One alternative called for two bike lanes on
the outside of the southbound portion of the roadway, while another put them on
the outside of both the northbound and southbound lanes.

Whether any of these, or a completely different design is ever drawn up, the
need for bicycle lanes on Riverside Drive is likely to become increasingly
evident in the years ahead.

There may have been fewer cyclists on Riverside Drive during the time frame that
the bike lanes were temporarily put down, but this will undoubtedly change
after and the Big River Crossing on the Harahan
Bridge is completed
later this year and when the Wolf River Greenway from Collierville to Mud Island is
finished in either late 2018 or early 2019.

Memphis' Riverside Drive has four lanes with two going north
and two south. The ones on the west (left-hand side)
temporarily had bicycle lanes, (from June 2014 to June 2015),
but these were removed by the city in the spring of 2016. No
plans for bike lanes have been discussed since then.

Cyclists will be pouring off of the Harahan or the Wolf River Greenway and the most
logical route from one to the other will be along Riverside Drive.Having bike lanes there by then would provide
a safe and easy way for cyclists to travel to and from these two future
attractions.

We can only hope that the city will see this for themselves and will take a
proactive approach to the situation; however, the cycling community should not
ever rely on others to look out for their best interests.

Cyclists really need to coalesce and come together on this and on any other
issue that could impact all of them in the Memphis metropolitan area.There is always strength in numbers and cyclists
should support those (either in the political arena, the business world, or
those in the community, at large) who support us.

Memphis has a beautiful riverfront and all of us have a right to have access to
it as many other cities have found a way to make their river fronts easily and
conveniently accessible to pedestrians and cyclists.Why can’t we?

This is an image of Riverside Drive that was taken in the mid-
1950's. Even though there has been some improvements to
the river front, Riverside Drive, itself, has changed very
little. Unlike many other cities, Memphis has not yet
embraced the concept of making its riverfront more
accessible to everyone and not just providing a
convenient speedway for motorists.

From New York to California, roads like the West Side Highway in New York to
the Embarcadero Freeway in San Francisco have both had their road capacities reduced
and motorists in these places were able to adjust and find alternative roads to travel on without the catastrophic consequences that some may have once predicted.

Unlike many other places in Memphis, Riverside Drive has the potential of being a showcase for our city with a
magnificent view of the Mississippi River that could be fully enjoyed and
appreciated by everyone, and not just by those who are speeding by it in a car on their way to somewhere else.

We need to decide now if we are going to allow others to make this decision for
us or if we will speak up and let others know that we want, and insist on getting bicycle lanes put back in on Riverside Drive.

Then, and only then, will Riverside Drive no longer be the boulevard of broken
dreams.

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About Me

I am a long-time resident of Memphis, Tennessee. I had a long active duty military career and I am now a student at the University of Memphis. I am married to a native Memphian who is a retired Memphis City School teacher. When I am not busy, or in school, you will likely find me out riding my bike or jogging around my East Memphis neighborhood. If you would like to learn more of my passion for cycling, you can follow me on twitter at - https://twitter.com/memphiscyclist, or you can check out my cycling website - http://memphiscyclist.com. If you have any questions or comments about my blogs, my website or about Memphis cycling, please feel free to contact me at mikel5061@yahoo.com.